This is a little project I have been working on for the past few months, also it is my first build as well as my first time getting to play with a raspberry pi. Its still on going with some tweaks here and there as of writing this I'm trying to adapt the MintyPi Battery Monitor to work with it. Ill start with what I currently have in the build. Started off with the Raspberry pi 3 (mostly due to the power of it) and have it connected to the official raspberry Pi 7" touch screen. On top of that I have the ADA Fruit Audio Bonnet with 2 8 Ohm 3 Watt speakers (mounted on the rear for now) for stereo sound. On the top I mounted 2 push buttons wired to the audio bonnet (which sits on top of the GPIO Pins, so tech its wired to those) for volume controls without any special button commands. Added a push button on the side for quick on/off (depending on power state) with a shutdown script attached to it so its not just cutting power off. On the bottom I mounted a small 3 w fan to help with cooling as this was giving me a overheat warning after a few minutes without it. There is a small red LED on the side that is next to the ON/OFF button but I haven't reconnected it yet, it was used to show power state (if it was on or if it was ready to be unplugged completely), and i may yet remove it altogether. For the controller I took a Bluetooth telescoping controller and cut it in half and mounted it onto the sides ( you will notice the Nintendo Switch railings mounted as well), I first tried the NS Joy-cons but i couldn't get them both to be usable as player one so I scraped that idea and added this one. I have it all inside the official raspberry pi 7" case (its getting a little crowded in there now) I am hoping to eventually make my own case, but have also toyed around the idea of getting rid of both USB hubs as well as the Ethernet port to add more room for things. Its being currently powered by the PB1000c and PB1000b wired together (have to still test this though i had them separate before and would just switch them off from charging and use). Let me know what you guys think of it so far or any feed back or suggestions would be greatly appreciated! ^_^ if anyone has any other questions on the build on how i did a certain thing let me know, or any of the scripts or what i have inside (its a 200GB sd card so lots of stuff! ^_^) I will be more than happy to share as well as the specifics on the controller and parts and what not (I apologize for this being so long again first build and first time posting anything like this). Also I might post a small video of it running and a full better look at it a little later. Thanks again everyone for the help especially VeteranGamer HoolyHoo 144TECH for helping me with the Battery Mod.

Well still waiting on the Power board should hopefully be in soon. On a brighter note i managed to get a really small charging board to use in the build that is no bigger then a quarter. At the time or writing this it has seen 2 charges, I will say that it does seem to take a while to charge the battery and the charger does seem to get really hot, but doesnt seem hot enough to cause any damage. Here is a link to the boards got them pretty cheap for a 10 pack off of amazon. If anyone has any other insight on these boards please let me know.

As for the battery life I finally got around to testing that yesterday by just letting it run with video demo in background on. It seems to run for about 2:45 - 3 hours which I would say is pretty damn good for a self built game machine, hell its even almost as much as the NS running xenoblade chronicles 2. The battery is a 3800mAh Li-ion battery only problem is due to its size and size of the case i have it out on the back of the system for now (at least there doesn't seem to be any heat build up on it from charging.)

As for the OSBD I'm still not sure if it is the build I have, but any time I try to run Hoolyhoos script it causes my speakers to just play static on any noise. I checked the scripts for the battery monitor, shutdown, my audio bonnet, and my external volume controls but I dont see a conflict with them. Perhaps i need to get a few of the interference rings to put around the speakers and see if that will work, unless anyone else has any ideas or would like to take a look at all the scripts to see if there is something I am missing.

Once I get the power board in I believe I am going to try to hard wire the controller to the power board so that way when I turn on console it will also turn on the controller instead of just running bluetooth, it might draw a little more power consumption due to it running off of the usb port or it might be about the same as if i ran it from the bluetooth connection. Hopefully I dont need to reconfigure all the damn controllers for all the emulators cause that was a Pain in the ass.

I will try to add more pictures soon since im finally on vacation from my job so i can get a little more time to work on it, I feel I am so close to finishing this just really want the OSBD and I think after that only thing would be a new case to fit everything better/ give a better look. Cause as of right now the official raspberry pi 7 inch case isn't the best looking but it does the job for now.

UPDATE 03/12/2018

Finally got the battery monitor working, turns out the adafruit audio bonnet does not play nice with hoolyhoos script so I had to go the USB audio route with audio amp. working on getting volume buttons thanks to Hoolyhoos script but seems to be hit and miss as of now. Still need to make my own case however cause due to the amount of boards in it ( I think 5-6 ) it is getting crowded in there with all the wires. Made a little video of it working and just going through what I have on it ( was also showing a friend the portable.) It's a 200gb sd card so it's got alot of stuff on it. Here is the video for progress so far and a small look at it.

SpoilerShow

Anyway thanks again to everyone that has helped/will help, hopefully i can get this sorted out with the sound and OSBD if not i might have to look at using a USB card like the one used in the minty pi builds.

Last edited by cainkirisgai on Tue Mar 13, 2018 7:32 am, edited 5 times in total.

Thanks everyone I'm waiting for a few more parts to come in to try hoolyhoos on screen battery icon again kinda borked the last set of Powerboost 1000s I had (oops.) Im hoping to redo the wiring on the buttons and whatnot with 22 gauge wire as well. I think when I do that I will take more pictures of the building process. I will say after looking into the minty pi and the other custom pi builds mine is probably rather easy in comparison. But i will say it has been fun as well as frustrating.

So far im not having much luck with the on screen battery monitor, when i install the script it just messes up my audio and just gives me a huge static noise for any audio that should be playing. When i delete the script it returns to normal so it is def something in the script that conflicts with the audio bonnet i have installed, gonna look further into it to see what it is. If anyone has any insight as to what might be the cause please let me know.

here is the script im running to use for the gpio volume button controls not sure if anything here is causing a conflict or maybe if i have to move some of the auto start scripts (if the order matters at all anyway)